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Patreon Q&A - January 1st, 2022 (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-01 22:05:22
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro

0:33 - How would the way Matt studies Japanese changed if he lived in Japan?

3:35 - When learning a language entirely through listening, how would one approach learning vocab?

6:37 - Is it a good idea to take monolingual definitions, translate them into your NL with DeepL, and use that in place or regular bilingual definitions?

13:15 - Could NL subtitles actually be a useful way to provide your brain with additional context while immersing?

18:53 - Is it possible to develop bad habits while taking a listening-only approach?

21:51 - What is Matt's current opinion of RTK?

27:49 - Should I worry about not subconsciously translating things into English in the early stages of learning?

29:29 - Does kanji fluency in Japanese carry over to Chinese?

30:25 - How should I approach learning Japanese grammar IN Japanese?

40:02 - Is it a good idea to pause and rewind when you don't understand something while immersing?

41:26 - I'm going to study abroad in Japan for a year; how can I avoid making bad habits while I'm there?

43:22 - Is the technique of "laddering" actually helpful when learning a 3rd language?

49:21 - When should you start focusing on watching content instead of reading?

50:16 - Do you think music has the potential to be a super effective language learning tool?

53:14 - If you natively speak a tonal/pitch accent language, how much of an advantage will you have when learning Japanese?



Japanese grammar website: https://www.kokugobunpou.com/

ゆる言語学ラジオ: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmpkIzF3xFzhPez7gXOyhVg

Files

Previews only

Patreon Q&A - January 1st, 2022

TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 0:33 - How would the way Matt studies Japanese changed if he lived in Japan? 3:35 - When learning a language entirely through listening, how would one approach learning vocab? 6:37 - Is it a good idea to take monolingual definitions, translate them into your NL with DeepL, and use that in place or regular bilingual definitions? 13:15 - Could NL subtitles actually be a useful way to provide your brain with additional context while immersing? 18:53 - Is it possible to develop bad habits while taking a listening-only approach? 21:51 - What is Matt's current opinion of RTK? 27:49 - Should I worry about not subconsciously translating things into English in the early stages of learning? 29:29 - Does kanji fluency in Japanese carry over to Chinese? 30:25 - How should I approach learning Japanese grammar IN Japanese? 40:02 - Is it a good idea to pause and rewind when you don't understand something while immersing? 41:26 - I'm going to study abroad in Japan for a year; how can I avoid making bad habits while I'm there? 43:22 - Is the technique of "lattering" actually helpful when learning a 3rd language? 49:21 - When should you start focusing on watching content instead of reading? 50:16 - Do you think music has the potential to be a super effective language learning tool? 53:14 - If you natively speak a tonal/pitch accent language, how much of an advantage will you have when learning Japanese? Japanese grammar website: https://www.kokugobunpou.com/ ゆる言語学ラジオ: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmpkIzF3xFzhPez7gXOyhVg

Comments

Anonymous

Hello Matt! I was born and raised in Sweden by Arabic parents and got to a fairly high level in both languages. I also reached fluency in English at a very young age thanks to the internet and TV shows like Family Guy, The Simpsons etc. Would you say this gives me an advantage in learning other languages? I'm currently learning Japanese and wondering if knowing any other languages will speed up the process. Thanks for answering!

Anonymous

Hi Matt! Is it bad to have a crush on your language parent? Asking for a friend.

Anonymous

Hey Matt. I make almost all my anki cards from light novels at this point and learn a lot of words and sentence "patterns" I rarely hear spoken by a native in audio immersion. To help avoid weird sub-vocalization I have been using computer generated sentence audio captured with shareX from this website: https://readspeaker.jp/ I mainly use the "Akira" male voice and it usually sounds pretty natural to me. Is this a good idea? and how is the pitch accent? I think it's pronouncing the word level pitch right but I could be wrong. Thanks!

Anonymous

Im super intimidated about the idea of having to learn how to read and have been on the fence about learning kanji, how bad of an idea do you think it is to skip fully learning how to read, mainly kanji and how will it effect my japanese study? Thanks matt

Anonymous

Does anyone know who the Chinese YouTuber he mentioned at the end is? I searched muyi muyi and all sorts of variations of that but didn't find anything.

B

Been using the JP1K deck and can't make any progress because it is trying to force me to learn Kanji, readings, and meanings all at the same time. it is too much for someone who doesn't speak Japanese already. Is there another deck that just focuses on core words or something?

昭和Guy51

Okay, here is my unsolicited advice (take it with a grain of salt): The first time you go through the JP1K(v2) deck don't worry about the kanji or trying to read the sentences. Focus on the vocabulary (audio) only and grade yourself on your recall of the vocabulary (audio) only. While you are going through the deck the first time also take time to listen to the sentence audio, but do not grade yourself on the sentences. As you go through the deck you may notice that you are starting to understand more and more of the sentences, too. Once you have heard every single word in the deck at least once, then start trying to memorize the kanji. At, that point because you have seen all of the Kanji in the deck so many times you may notice that you already have some familiarity with the kanji and that you can now pick up the kanji much easier.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, You've mentioned in the past how you/others have gone through production RTK as a way of learning to write after already reaching fluency in Japanese. Can you share more details on how you would go about this? E.g., would you still use mnemonics with stories in Japanese, or just keywords?

Anonymous

Hey dude, I have a question about kanji recognition. I have been through the original JP1K deck and finished that and have been sentence mining ever since. (AKA I'm at stage 2a and learning my first show) I have an issue whereby I can pretty much always recall the reading and meaning of the kanji on a given sentence, but I’m always doing it based on the context of the sentence. Given the kanji alone, I would fail every time still. What can I do about this or does this get better over time?

Anonymous

Hello, new patreon here. One question, some words in the anki deck i already know from anime. So Should I mark as correct when i read the furugana or hear the word? Since i know the meaning of the word, but not the kanji.

Anonymous

Hi Matt, happy new year! New patreon, here. I have just discovered your channel yesterday and then went through a few videos who eventually led me here. I was intrigued by your answer regarding "thinking in a language" vs "thinking in mentalese". Being Italian and having lived for 11 years in the US and having worked for an American company for 15 years, speaking English and consuming English content every single day, I consider myself fluent in English (with a bad Italian accent, of course). After a couple of years of living in the US, fully immersed into English, with no Italian friends and no way to speak Italian at all, I went through the experience that you are describing of not needing to go English --> mentalese --> Italian, and instead of being able to "accept" that I was able to fully understand English without needing that extra step for confirmation. In parallel, I realized that I was also able to produce English directly from mentalese, with no need to translate any longer. So I understand your point very well. However, language is not only used for INPUT and OUTPUT, but also to THINK to ourselves. We all "think" by talking to ourselves in our minds, don't we? Maybe you are in the garden, and you are thinking about a conversation you had with someone, or thinking about how to solve a problem you are having. When you do that, you convert mentalese in your head into some language to talk to yourself, don't you? When I do that, sometimes I use Italian, sometimes English, mostly depending on whether the topic I am thinking about is more related to work (which for me is conducted in English) or family (which is in Italian). When my friends ask me in which language I think, what they really mean is asking which language I translate mentalese to in my head when I think.

Anonymous

Hello Matt... would you recommend getting a degree in Japanese? I want to live in Japan as well. But if I can speak the language and read and understand than why should someone have a degree? As well as should I consider going to school to take Japanese classes when I think refold is doing wonders?

Anonymous

Hey Matt! I was wondering if you've heard of this guy called Roto Ozeki? He's a japanese person learning english through immersion. The level he reached in just a year and a half is super impressive and after hearing him speak english in some other videos I'd say he's already reached low basic fluency. His pronunciation was especially impressive and it surprised me how good it was. I think this guy would be a great person to interview. Anyways, I just wanted to put this guy on your radar if he wasn't already. Cheers Matt

Anonymous

Hi Matt, do you have any thoughts about getting distracted from immersing due to anglicisms? This problem occurred to me while watching gaming videos in TL as they often occur within the gaming niche. Thanks!

jack

For learning numbers do you think it is necessary to do math or drills in Japanese to reach a native level in them? Natives have a reason to use their numbers thousands upon thousands of times, So I wonder if you would ever reach a native level just through immersion. E.G. Could you read the number 136,849Y as fast as you could in english? if so how did you get there?

Anonymous

For words that have multiple translations from TL to NL, what would be the most effective when creating anki cards : a card for each meaning, with the context on the front (for example in Russian, there would be on the front : настояться [cooking]), or a card where you have to guess all the meanings at once?

Anonymous

Would it be okay in your opinion if while studying JP1K v2, to also practice reading using, for example, Graded Readers books?

Greg St. Angelo
>>74819996

You are only supposed to be grading yourself on the meaning. So pass the card even if you don't remember the reading, the whole goal of the deck is to teach kanji fluency. If you don't know kana already you should definitely learn it to a fairly comfortable level before using the deck imo 🙂

Greg St. Angelo
>>75057089

I had this same thought when, in a previous video, Matt talked about how when he heard a big number he would just say "oh, big number" in his head and not actually try and figure out the exact value!

Greg St. Angelo

In your interview with Ken he mentioned that when you read in your head you activate your vocal chords. This got me a little concerned for starting to read too early on in the process. I would imagine it is nowhere near as detrimental as actually speaking but I was curious about your take on it. Should I avoid reading for now and just focus on immersion that contains audio if my goal is to have very good pitch?

Anonymous

Hi Matt! I have maybe a rather strange question! So I play an instrument, and one of the things we learn as you get more advanced is "how to practice the right way". Long story short of this ideology is: Practicing for less time the right way is way more effective than practicing for more time the WRONG way. In relation to learning Japanese, I wanted to know if you feel like this same rule applies. Let's say I only have an hour or so a day to practice (on other days, I can make more time, but most of the time with multiple jobs, it's very difficult to maximize my active immersion time). If this is the case, would it still be just as effective to have only this hour of immersion, given it is a lot of comprehensible input (let's say we use Ken's method from your interview to help make the JP a bit more comprehensive along with still studying JP 1k, etc) Or is it still worth it to try and put more time if even if I understand less? I know that parsing words and listening to the language is important. This whole thought process of mine is more on still wanting to efficiently work on becoming fluent with the little time I have in as little time as possible (since it's all i can manage right now). Is this unrealistic? I'd love to know your thoughts!

Anonymous

Hey, I'm fairly new to learning Japanese and am a little confused about how to get into reading. How do you deal with kanji early-on when you don't know how to read them or what they mean? Is it better to just wait until I can read kanji or find material with furigana? Or should I just gloss over the kanji and try to read the ones I do know?

Anonymous

Should you watch with tl subs or no subs or a bit of both

Daniel

hypothetical question: say if someone was able to immerse between 8+ hours for an entire calendar year without having to care for other responsibilities (school, work, family, etc), would they be able to reach basic fluency? for a starting point i’ll use myself in this hypothetical situation, i’ve been immersing for around 10 months and would categorize myself under stage 2C. additionally if they didn’t care about reading and only chose to prioritize listening and speaking, would that process be easier?

Anonymous

Hey Matt! Love your content please keep it up. I have finished studying Hiragana and Katakana and can read them both quite well. I was just wondering where you would suggest I take my studies from here? I have been immersing in native content and studying the JP1K deck. Was just wondering if you could recommend any grammar guides or other study material at my current level? thanks for your help.

Anonymous

Question: can we shadow/adopt more than one parent? Although our parents are our first influencers, we develop strong affinities for other people as we age (e.g. celebs) and also start imitating them. Can we build our second language personality from a composite of people, instead of just one?

Anonymous

Does the perceived volume of Japanese increase with experience? I increase the volume of Japanese shows vs English shows to hear better which is fine except for the occasional times when with loud sounds like screaming, sound effects etc which become exponentially louder since I have the TV volume up haha.

arec

Do you think its harmful to always have TL subtitles on? I would say I have a decent listening foundation from only watching raw for the first 6 months of learning JP, but I still put subs on since its more engaging and making cards is alot smoother. Do you think it will hinder my listening ability if 50-80% of my immersion is subbed? (the rest raw listening)

Anonymous

Question: what's the recommended mix of audio-only shadowing vs video shadowing where one tries to mimic every aspect of the parent, e.g. body language, facial tics, etc.

Anonymous

Hello Matt, I found your channel recently and discovered you and your community have created the refold roadmap for learning a language. Finding this method inspired me to plunge into learning Spanish through immersion. I’ve been at this for a couple days now and I have seen small improvements in my Spanish even in that short period of time. This still doesn’t stop me from questioning if the entire language learning process is pointless because I could never achieve my goal of being fluent in the language. I understand that doubts are perfectly normal and to be expected but I still feel like I could quell a lot of the anxiety I have about language learning if I had a better understanding of it. That leads me to my question and chief concern, “Can you become native level fluent in a language after the age of 18?”. I am a 19 year old about to go to college who will most certainly not have as much time to dedicate to learning Spanish. I also never hear cases of people achieving near native level fluency in adulthood. Does all this mean I missed the bus for native Spanish fluency?

Anonymous

Are you doing a follow up video on the mpv video and in that case when is it estimated to come

Anonymous

How would you approach intensive immersion and sentence mining with a listening only approach.

Anonymous

Im currently learning English but I've got a problem when it comes to watching certain movies/series: the audio kinda blurry or not too high quality(I feel like this is the main problem) and mumbling makes it difficult to understand , as opposed to watching your videos or other youtube videos, for example, cuz generally there is very little that I can't make out . Have you had this kind of problem with japanese and what do you recommend? Because I feel I make no progress in movies with this kind of audio trying to flex my brain around what they are saying. Though Im just 1 year into learning English. Thanks!

Anonymous

I have a Japanese interest that is rather challenging language-wise. Should I dive right in, or wait until I'm better at the language? The hobby is Magic: The Gathering, where the names of cards are often really rare words, and the card text often requires a really deep understanding of precise language and grammar and often stumps me even in English. Its also a lot of reading, which has its downsides.

Diogo Lameiro

Hey Matt. I'm in stage 2B, and I'm wondering about this: If I'm watching two series, and one is more comprehensible than the other, for example Pokemon and Naruto, and I wanted to choose one to watch with TL subs and the other one without subs, which should I watch with subs, the easier one (Pokemon), or the harder one (Naruto)? Is there a benefit in approaching it this way, or should I just mix TL subs and no subs on both? PS: Not that it matters, but I'm guessing you read my name wrong, it should be something like "D-O-Gu" (PT pronunciation) Thank you, wish you the best!

Easton Harrison

Hello Matt, I am currently spending about 6-8 hours every day doing active immersion (this time frame is not including doing anki/making anki cards or passive immersion), what do you think is the best ratio for intensive immersion and free flow immersion? Should I focus soley on actively looking up words during that whole time frame (say every three to five minutes), or should I give myself more uninteruppted input? Any input/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Anonymous
>>74905061

You should only get a degree if you want to specifically work with language-related stuff

BigDaddeyD

Would you recommend watching the same show multiple times to learn the dialogue really well or is it always better to watch a new show?